Blood of a Phoenix (The Nix Series Book 2) Read online

  “Yes, I saw them both,” Zee said.

  A body could be faked, you should know that. You’ve done it before. Luca helped you fake a body for one of your hits. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on breathing normally.

  “What’s he saying?” Dinah whispered loud enough that Zee heard her through the line.

  “None of your damn business,” he snarled.

  I put my head against the edge of the booth. “I’ve got to go. See if you can get any details from the picture. Age it, see if it’s an old one of one of my brothers, or even Romano himself. Bear had enough of their looks that something Photoshopped could be made to look just like him.” Like him, like my Bear.

  “Kid is in a uniform, too, one with a dragon on the crest. I’ll track down the school. Don’t worry, Nix. Romano won’t get away with any of this shit. It’s a game to him, and we both know it,” Zee said. None of his words did anything to soothe my battered and wildly beating heart. The burst of hope was almost worse than no hope at all. The picture was not of my Bear. I’d seen my boy die. Romano knew hope for the impossible would hurt me worse than anything else, like the motherfucking piece of slimy shit bastard he was.

  “I’ll check in once I get where I’m going,” I said. “Be careful, Zee. If they know where you are, they could send someone after you now, try to use you against me, too.”

  He grunted. “Thought of that. I’ll take my cell phone with me and head out after I get someone to come in and take care of the horses.”

  “I’m not coming back, Zee. I told you that.” I couldn’t even muster a real heat in my words. “I’m not walking out of this alive. I never thought I would.”

  “You don’t know that, and those horses were a part of you finding yourself all those years ago.” He paused. “Don’t give up on living, Nix. Not yet.”

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “I gotta go.” I hung up. There was nothing left to say. Zee would do what he thought was best and there was nothing I could do about that picture or how Romano had manipulated it. I had to put it behind me to keep moving forward.

  I headed to the diner and Abe stayed tightly to my leg. I moved on autopilot because I was still trying to put Bear from my mind. My fingers fumbled around in my coat pocket, closing on the small box with a worn tag I’d packed with me for the last five months. A gift from Bear I hadn’t found the strength to open yet.

  Hope was a deadly disease in my world; it represented too many deaths. Hope, when twisted and used to control, could get you killed faster than a speeding bullet.

  The door dinged as we stepped through and a few pairs of eyes looked up. Most were blurred with fatigue and too many hours of driving. I’d lay money the truckers didn’t look a whole lot different than me.

  “You can’t have that dog in here,” a waitress said as she passed.

  “Service dog,” I said softly.

  She paused, looked me over, searching for my disability. “Yeah, sure. Fine. But if he makes a mess or shits on the floor, you’re cleaning it up.”

  I didn’t argue with her, just made my way to an empty booth near the kitchen. Another waitress came by and took my order—two double cheeseburgers, fries, and a large soda. It wasn’t until after I ordered that I realized I’d picked food that Justin would have chosen. I snorted softly to myself. My boys were never far from my heart and mind. Even now, when I was on the hunt to destroy their killers, they were with me.

  I pulled from my pocket the small box done up in Christmas paper. Biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood, I made my fingers slide through the paper, made them open the gift. I ignored the shaking in my fingers, in my hands, as the tiny black box appeared beneath the wrapping.

  I drew another breath and pulled the lid off.

  Inside the box was a note and I pried it out first.

  Mama, you are my angel and that’s why I thought this was the perfect gift. Love, Bear.

  Soft noises slipped from me as I fought to stem the tears, as I bit down on the emotions that swelled through me. Abe whined and bunted me with his nose, picking up on my distress. I folded the note and tucked it inside my bra. Then I looked into the box. Something silver glinted and I pulled it out. A single wing hung from a necklace chain as though . . . as though Bear had at some point known what was tattooed onto my back. There was no way, Zee had hidden my tattoo with his abilities, cloaking it so even Justin didn’t know it was there. I bowed my head and slid the necklace on, tucking it under my shirt and pressing my hand against it.

  The door to the diner dinged and I looked up. Icy anger flowed through my veins, replacing the grief as I took in the newcomer. One hand dropped to Eleanor, caressing the steel and recalling the promise I’d made to the man in the doorway such a short time ago.

  Apparently, I was not done with the past, after all.

  Chapter Three

  The man who stepped through the diner door was not one I expected. Especially not after the last time I’d spoken to him. Noah Black, aka Noah Lancaster, was my husband’s partner in crime. Tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was a solid man with plenty of muscle; more than a few of the waitresses did a double take as he stood looking around. He stuck out like a sore thumb against the bearded and fatigued truckers.

  I had my one hand under my jacket on Eleanor’s grip. She shivered, and Dinah whined under her breath. “Eleanor has all the fun.”

  Noah pulled his sunglasses off and those blue eyes swept the room, finally landing on me. He stepped around a waitress and sat himself across from me, his long legs brushing against mine. Abe let out a long low growl from his spot on the floor beside me. I put my free hand on his head. “What the fuck are you doing here? Do you want to see if I will hold to my word and blow your head off?” I’d warned him the last time I’d seen him, after finding out how deep his deception went that I would do just that.

  He frowned. “You don’t want to know how I found you?”

  I glared at him. “GPS trackers are a dime a dozen. I’ll be sure to check my car before I leave.”

  He shook his head as if he was sad. “Bea—”

  “Phoenix,” I corrected him. “Or Nix if you prefer.”

  “Fine. Nix,” he said. “You are going after your father. I’d like to help. Justin was my friend and the closest thing to a brother I had.”

  I snorted. My waitress came back with my food and I tucked into it while Noah ordered his own food. Half my burger was gone before he moved to speak again.

  A few slow blinks from him as he watched me eat, but he wisely kept his comments to himself. “I don’t have the family bible to break the code Justin created, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help. He and I talked about what we would do, how we could cut into your father’s profits and how we could take him down. I have good information.”

  I raised a single french fry at him. “Stop calling him that. Romano will do fine. He stopped being my father the second he had my son killed.” I flipped the fry to Abe who caught it with a snap of his teeth.

  Noah didn’t back down. “Romano has his fingers in more spots than even Mancini and the Collective realize.”

  My eyebrows shot up and I spoke around the last mouthful of burger. “And what do you know about the Collective and Mancini?”

  He tapped his fingers on the table. “The Collective runs the hidden world, controls the usage of magic and myst. Mancini runs the Collective. What else is there to know?”

  I wiped my fingers on my napkin and slid the plate with the extra burger to the side of the table. Abe took it without a need for more of a prompt. “There is a hell of a lot more to the Collective than that.”

  He stared at me, as if I would just spill the beans here in the middle of a truck stop with normals all around us oblivious to what we were discussing. The door opened with a ding and Simon stepped through. Add one abnormal to the room, then.

  Abe pressed against my leg, a low rumble in his chest. The hair stood on the back of my neck as the person in the bo
oth behind me gave a deep grunt, and a waft of animal musk floated to me.

  Okay, so make that a second abnormal. Abnormals carried a smell to them. The weaker they were in hiding their abilities, the weaker they were in using myst magic, the stronger the smell. The dude behind me might as well have dunked himself in a vat of abnormal scent. I gritted my teeth and blew a sharp breath out my nose.

  “Legen.” I pointed to the ground and Abe laid flat as if I’d clonked him on the head.

  “Nix,” Noah said my name and that was all he got out before the abnormal behind me shot out of the booth and spun to face me.

  I had my legs on the bench seat and scrambled onto the table, and as quick as my reflexes were, I knew I was slow. Injuries and fatigue had me at their mercy.

  The abnormal was a big guy with wide shoulders that were bulked up as if he had been using steroids at an accelerated pace. The same dude that I’d passed in the parking lot.

  I stood on the table, legs apart for balance, and both Dinah and Eleanor drawn and pointed at him. “You got a problem, big man?”

  The abnormal had tiny pig eyes and his nose was curled slightly making me think he had some rhino DNA kicking around in there. Entirely possible with the way magic and myst worked.

  “You the Phoenix?” He rumbled the words and they resonated in my chest; the sound was so deep he might as well have had a personal bass system inside him.

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?” I hadn’t moved from my stance on the table. Noah stayed where he was—smart for an ex-FBI agent—and Simon stood by the door.

  The abnormal pointed a thick finger at me. “You kill abnormals.”

  I nodded. “Only when they disturb my lunch. It gives me indigestion.”

  Dinah snickered. I ran a thumb over her stock to keep her quiet.

  Although I wouldn’t have said it was possible, the abnormal narrowed his eyes further. “I think I can take you.”

  My eyes widened. What the fuck was this? Since when were abnormals coming after me?

  He gave a full-body shudder and his skin shimmered from a human tone, to a rather dark gray shade that gave more credence to the rhino look. He shook his big head side to side. “I think you’re going to die today, Phoenix. And I’m going to get a good payday.”

  The rest of the truckers, along with the waitstaff and cooks, hurried out of the diner. I didn’t blame them. The big rhino abnormal currently pawed at the ground with one foot and then the other, sending chunks of the tile floor flying behind him. As if readying himself for a charge.

  This was not how I thought my day would go when I woke up.

  “Kriech,” I commanded Abe, and he shot toward the abnormal, on his belly, crawling like a commando until he was under a far table away from the path of the oncoming abnormal freight train.

  I squeezed Dinah’s trigger and shot off a round at Rhino just to see what would happen. The bullet slammed into his chest over the heart, perfect aim. It flattened as if it had hammered into steel before it fell to the floor.

  “Well, that’s shitty,” I muttered. The words had no sooner left my mouth when he charged.

  “Jump!” Noah yelled as he leapt from the booth. I jammed Dinah and Eleanor back in their holsters.

  I waited, feeling the milliseconds pass as if they were minutes. At the last possible moment, I leapt up and grabbed the edge of the rafter above. The abnormal crashed into the table, booth, then through the wall into the kitchen. Screaming ensued. Apparently not all the cooks had left.

  I swung where I was, the bite in my shoulder throbbing like a son of a bitch. I let go and landed in a crouch away from the hole the abnormal had created in the wall. I stared into it, waiting.

  Eyes or ears, that would be the only place bullets would take him, I knew it without knowing how. And with those beady eyes and the way the rolls of his face covered them when he’d charged, hitting them would be tough, even with Dinah and Eleanor.

  “Ears?” Eleanor asked as if reading my mind. “His skin is too hard even for us.”

  “Yeah, looks like it,” I said.

  A hand dropped on my arm. Noah.

  “We have time. Let’s go before he gets his feet under him.” He gave me a tug toward the open door.

  Simon waited, his face calm. He knew I wouldn’t leave without dealing with the rhino now. That’s not how this worked. If you were attacked in the abnormal world, you saw it through to the end, one way or another.

  I grimaced. Damn it. I’d been hoping to leave Simon behind, because with him taking calls while I slept, I wasn’t sure I could trust him anymore.

  Noah was a far better liar and I didn’t need to be second guessing myself, but I would take him with me. The devil you knew was not always better than the devil you didn’t, but in this case, I would make an exception.

  “I don’t leave a mess behind.” I jerked my arm out of his hand and it cost me. My shoulder spasmed as the rhino stepped out of the hole, shaking his head.

  “Killing you now,” he said. “Killing you good and hard.”

  “Feeling’s mutual, big ugly,” I tossed back. He roared, showing off his monstrous flat teeth and thick purple tongue before he charged. Again, I waited for the last second before pivoting on one foot and just letting him slide by me. I brought Dinah up and squeezed off a round as I aimed for his ear. Like his eyes, they were tiny pinpricks, and had plenty of that hardened skin rolled around them.

  Showing an agility that did me no favors, the rhino twisted as he passed, and Dinah’s bullet missed its mark, bouncing off the bones of his cheek.

  “Son of a bitch!” she screamed and shot twice more at him without my finger squeezing the trigger. The bullets bounced off the side of his head as well, missing the ear entirely.

  Rhino grabbed a table and lifted it over his head.

  Oh, this was not going too well.

  He flung it at me, the laminate table top screeching as it flew toward my head. I dropped to the floor and the table whipped past me and into the hole he’d already put in the wall. The two giant feet attached to the rhino slammed toward me, mashing the floor with massive dents, breaking up what was left of the tile.

  Being trampled was not in my morning agenda, so I had to move fast.

  I rolled down the pathway between tables, and shoved myself under one to catch a breath. Rhino ripped the table above me off its metal stand and threw it out the window behind my head. Glass tinkled down around me.

  “Incendiary,” I said as I brought Eleanor up and aimed at his nose. A click in her inner workings, and I pulled the trigger.

  Her bullet left her muzzle in a bright trail of flame that erupted as it slammed into the rhino’s face. He roared and clapped at the flames as he stumbled back from me. I tucked Eleanor into her holster, then Dinah next.

  “Wait, we have to kill him!” Dinah snarled. She never did like missing a mark, and even worse when she knew it should have been an easy kill.

  I pulled a silver tool from under my shirt. The tool—Linx was his name—was similar to Dinah and Eleanor in his sentience. I kept him strapped to my bare skin, because as I’d learned, you never knew when you might be forced to strip naked and still want to have weapons on hand.

  “Yeah, boss?” he asked.

  “Ice pick,” I said.

  His silver body shimmered and slid from the pair of oversized tweezers he’d been into a perfectly thin long ice pick.

  The rhino stumbled around, the flames on his skin dying but not before leaping to parts of the diner. The walls and several tables lit up one by one. Fine by me, it would cover evidence of me and the abnormal and our rather messy fight. I stepped up beside him and rammed the ice pick deep into his ear. His whole body convulsed once, then he went to his knees and from there he fell flat on his face. I pulled Linx from his ear, blood dripping from the tip. I wiped it on the back of the rhino’s shirt. “Sorry about that, Linx.”

  “All good, boss. Tool is a tool, is a tool,” he said. I tucked him back under my
shirt and wrapped him with the strap that held him tightly to me. “Abe, hier.” I snapped my fingers and Abe crept out from under his table, his eyes wide and his tongue lolling as he panted hard. A good guard dog he was, but he didn’t like fire and I couldn’t blame him. I was not the only one with singed hair after that last go around in Hollywood.

  I walked out of the diner and into the open parking lot. Simon stood by the car, waiting, as did Noah. Fuck me, neither of them was going to let me go easily. Jaw ticking, I strode toward them through the crowd of people. All the hurts from two days ago had lit back up, and I was pretty sure the stitches in my shoulder had been torn open. But even I knew I was lucky. That abnormal had not been provoked, and that was strange enough as it was.

  What had set him off? Usually the abnormals—if they realized who I was—avoided me like the plague of 2019. And what had he meant by a payday? I rubbed a hand over my face, knowing we had minutes, at best, before the local police and fire department were here.

  “You are not both coming with me,” I said.

  Simon smirked and I looked at Noah. “You want revenge on Romano?”

  “I do.”

  “Think you can keep from lying to me?”

  His jaw tightened and Simon pushed between us. “Wait, I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not.” I shoved him back. “You’re taking calls when I’m asleep.”

  His jaw dropped and he spluttered before he actually spoke words. “I can’t talk to a friend?”

  “Fuck off, you’re a damn liar,” Eleanor shouted. “Those were not friend words. You were scared.”

  I flipped the keys to Noah. Whatever energy I’d gained from my food and short nap was gone after the fight. “Seeing as the two of you aren’t good for much else, you’re driving. I need to sleep.”